My thoughts have always been the same:
It'd be great for you to be back, you bring so much to this community in so many different ways.
However, you won the 'best member' awards and were pretty much always top of the likes chart etc. People definitely did (and still do) hugely appreciate everything you contribute.
The 'problem' is that outside of our core group of members, most people never give reactions - not necessarily because they don't care, just they prefer to be a fly on the wall rather than a participant. But we have to accept everyone comes to this site for different reasons. One of the largest reasons of all is to see pictures of women peeing, and so this type of content will get more likes.
I truly can understand your frustration here. You have poured so many hours into making friendships here, helping people and creating incredible original content. And so if a generic picture copied and posted gets more likes/appreciation, where's the fairness? But my answer is the like system is not a representation of fairness, as a large amount of members never even go outside of the pee sections.
Truthfully, at first I did not fully understand the desire of yours. But now I really do. You put so much effort in, and it takes so little effort to hit like, why don't people just do it if it makes you happy? I genuinely do understand your perspective now - It is about being seen, and your efforts being acknowledged and appreciated. You want to be all or nothing here - fully committed or not here at all.
But please just bear in mind that most people just don't see likes in the same way. Even me as the admin here, who should really be encouraging people with likes as much as possible, rarely leave likes. Not because I don't care, it's just not a priority for me. Sometimes I remember, but not always. There are a lot of great posts here, there's no way I'd have time to like them all.
So, I truly do hope this post helps people realise how much the appreciation means to you, and I hope this acts as a catalyst for the likes system to be used more in general for everyone - with all members showing their appreciation for posts. And I also truly hope you feel our appreciation here and decide to stay. But as well as us trying to show our appreciation better, you will also need to accept that for most members here not liking something does NOT mean they disliked it, they just use the system in a very different way to you. I think to truly understand people's appreciation, reading the loving comments you've received is a much better reflection of peoples feelings than the number of likes.